Brexit has encouraged me to re-visit philosophy to make sense of things. I hope epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge, & the ethics of belief will help me answer this question: When everyone's entitled to a Brexit opinion, does it matter who's right & who's wrong? A thread /1

Brexit looks like a disaster for the economy & the future of the UK. But the decision to leave the EU also reveals a troublingly widespread lack of concern with knowledge & understanding. Thus Brexit reveals a high degree of epistemic ineptitude among the British electorate /2

Although I’m informed about the EU, I’m also aware of how little I know. The latter is not true for most leave voters I speak with. For all their opinion and rhetoric, the most astounding thing I’ve noticed is: the degree of magical thinking; poor reasoning skills; /3

lamentable judgment; simplistic black-and-white thinking; and general lack of accurate knowledge on display. If we were talking about sports, TV shows, or some other inanity, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing. But we're not. /4

We're talking about Brexit, an issue with the most complex and far-reaching implications, and I’m still awaiting a coherent and comprehensible explanation of why and how Brexit is a good thing. Pithy slogans like taking back control don’t cut it with me. /5

It seems many people who voted to leave the EU cast their votes in the referendum without due consideration and understanding of the issues at hand. This debases our democracy, and it makes me furious. It’s easy to call Brexiters stupid but more often than not, they’re not. /6

’Stupid’ is a lazy label which lets Brexiters off the hook of personal culpability. If Brexit goes ahead & the shit hits the fan, I want to be able to hold people to account. So I don’t call them stupid, I call them epistemically incontinent - and this is why it’s important. /7

Picture yourself in a courtroom. The prosecution & defence each present evidence, in the form of documentary evidence & witness testimony, expert & otherwise. Both present a case based on all this information & hope to win the argument by presenting the most likely explanation /8

of the defendant’s guilt or innocence, while a judge or jury conclude the process by giving a verdict. Epistemology operates in a similar way, although, rather than judging guilt or innocence, epistemologists make judgments about the quality of knowledge. /9

In a way, we’re all epistemic agents when we seek knowledge to justify our beliefs and arguments - or indeed our voting preferences. And that’s why this is so relevant to Brexit. /10

Analytic epistemologists argue that only justified true beliefs qualify as knowledge, rather than mere opinion. So, if I hold a belief that is true & which can be justified (say, with evidence), I can be said to possess knowledge. If not, that belief's just an opinion. /11

Virtue epistemologists prioritise our methods of inquiry, for example our open-mindedness, reflective-capability and commitment to things like truth and understanding. Another key issue is what the ancient Greeks called Akrasia - to be weak-willed or incontinent /12

Epistemic incontinence, a lazy unwillingness to check the data & verify arguments, seems characteristic of too many voters in the referendum. Votes based on mere opinion & a lack of knowledge & understanding just isn’t good enough in an apparently mature democracy, /13

especially when it comes to the most important vote in our nation’s modern history. At this point, images of red buses with funding slogans might come to mind. Who would believe such a claim, that £350million a week ‘given’ to the EU would be handed over instead to the NHS? /14

If you believed it, you didn’t do your homework & spot how unjustifiable the claim is. Thus, you’re epistemically incontinent. The same can be said for all the other lies & misleading claims. Did you do your homework & check if these ‘truths’ were in fact true or justified? /15

Or did you just believe what you wanted to believe? If so, you’re epistemically incontinent. Facts can of course be dubious. What about other forms of evidence? How about the testimony of Leave campaigners like Boris Johnson & Nigel Farage, /16

both of whom seem to have a ‘difficult’ relationship with the truth? Like a jury in a court case, we listen to witness testimony but we also need to distinguish whose testimony is more trustworthy. /17

Did you trust Johnson and Farage over a group of experts who actually know what they’re talking about? If yes, you’ve done it again. You’re epistemically incontinent. And, according to Michael Gove, there’s a lot of this epistemic incontinence going around. /18

Lies and misinformation have surely tainted the debate about the EU & Brexit, and there will presumably be a reckoning for the Brexit cheer-leaders when their promises fail to materialise. /19

But what about those who readily ignored the experts and accepted the words of dubious Brexit campaigners instead? This is points to a deeper problem than Brexit alone, especially at a time when our democracy appears to be under threat. /20

Democracies thrive on an informed electorate, but also one that’s able to decipher the arguments. With such widespread epistemic incontinence, it’s not clear the UK can boast such a thing. /21

Related threads

1) Corbyn, #Brexit & facing reality - thread
Since this was posted there's been several variations from his supporters on why his responses were "reasonable", which in turn illustrate how far they are happy to put party before country, and Corbyn before party

2) the question, as a reminder, was very simple "do you (personally) believe we'll be better or worse off after #Brexit?"
One response is "he answered this"
He absolutely didn't, he waffled & none of his 6 answers can be interpreted as "yes" or "no"

3) "but Labour are pushing for the best deal/2nd ref/it's a negotiating position"

These may or may not be true, but they are irrelevant as to why Corbyn didn't answer the question - he was asked about his personal position

1) "Parliament follows" - a #Brexit story
Been engaged in a long thread with @0Calamity and others with the common Corbynite theme:
"But what can Corbyn do? He's not in power"
For a "popular movement" there seems to be a lack of awareness of how they work.
So, what *can* he do?

2) well firstly we need to recognize two fairly obvious things.
a) unfortunately, 80% of our current MPs are, well, sheep. They follow, especially public opinion, they don't lead
b) the prerequisite for stopping Brexit is public opinion. This *must* be shifted or it won't stick

3) this is when Corbynistas chime in & say "look at the polls,enough people haven't shifted, if Corbyn opposed Brexit it would be political suicide"

Putting to one side the "party before country" bias which is obvious to any non Labour supporter, isn't this what Labour is about?

1) What Dominic did
There may be solid behind the scenes reasons for Grieve voting against his own amendment, but what he did today is very symbolic
Other votes were important but this was the big one, the meaningful vote, and Grieve has made a grave error for a number of reasons

2) Firstly the entire Labour "soft #Brexit" strategy was built around the meaningful vote. It may have been real, it may have been fluff, but it was one potential line of defence that Grieve has now weakened.

Labour were clear and the 6 tests were being mentioned again

3) Secondly the meaningful vote amendment was something everyone could get behind & was hard to criticize.

EEA amendments had pros & cons and didn't satisfy all anti brexiters but this was easy to defend and support across the spectrum

1. By now, business should have a good idea of what lies ahead if we leave the single market. They should but they don't. Their own research is poor, industry associations are useless and there is complacency throughout. They trust that the government will sort something out.

2. This is partly because the media is not doing its job. It is consumed by the trivia of Westminster - especially meaningless amendments that make no difference either way. We're also not getting any reliable information from our government.

3. The EUs Notices to Stakeholders are the only reliable official information which the media doesn't bother to report on and where it does it simply does not understand the significance of them. They are not speculation. They are the official legal position of the EU.

This *may* be of interest. My own personal German based Liam Fox anecdote.

Frankfurt based since 2001 I was invited to a (I’ll keep it unnamed) Anglo-German business meeting in 2017 in which Fox was the guest of honour.
The subject was „the post #brexit UK-German relationship“.

2/ ..should have been home ground for Fox. The majority of attendees were more FDP than CDU (FDP is nearest thing Ger has to a euro-critical low tax Tory party).

Its Frankfurt-all Germans speak English, they may not like #brexit but they distrust „Brussels“ & want a EU-UK deal..

3/ Fox starts well enough saying how theres no sense in building up barriers where none exists btwn UK & Germany & that once „emotion“ of #brexit gone things will be smooth. Ger biz crowd like this - against emotion & barriers in trade sounds good to them

#Brexit 2
Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with EU grant.
British Army's new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.